Wears the green coronal of leaves with which
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower,
With scented breath and look so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation° of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this great universe.

My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.
Lo! all grow old and die- but see again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses

ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,

The freshness of her far beginning lies

And yet shall lie.

Life mocks the idle hate

Of his arch-enemy Death

yea, seats himself

85

Upon the tyrant's throne the sepulchre,

And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe

Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.°

There have been holy men who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave

Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seemed
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks
Around them; and there have been holy men
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.°
But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,

The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble and are still. O God! when thou
Dost scare the world with tempest, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament,

The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities - who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and

sere.

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread; The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,

5

And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. 10
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer
glow;

But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, 15 And the yellow sun-flower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home; 20 When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no

more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, 25 The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side.° In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf,

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief: Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours,

So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. 30

THE GLADNESS OF NATURE

Is this a time to be cloudy and sad,

When our mother Nature laughs around;

When even the deep blue heavens look glad,

And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?

There are notes of joy from the hang-bird° and wren,
And the gossip of swallows through all the sky;
The ground-squirrel gayly chirps by his den,
And the wilding bee hums merrily by.

5

The clouds are at play in the azure space

And their shadows at play on the bright-green vale, 10 And here they stretch to the frolic chase, And there they roll on the easy gale.

There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower,

There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree, There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower, 15 And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.

And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles
On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray,
On the leaping waters and gay young isles;
Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away.

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TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN°

THOU blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.

5

Thou waitest late and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,

10

And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.